28 réponses à ce sujet

[Ace Attorney]

Everybody loves Assassin (with good reason mind you), but anyone ever try using the other 2 specializations together?

[Atmosfear3]

Why would you willingly choose to do less damage? Thats counter-productive to what a rogue is suppose to do in the first place.

Duelist is a useless tree. Defense and the other tanking talents are worthless because you shouldn't ever be tanking and can be easily gotten if you simply have more cunning. The attack passive is worthless because you can easily attain that with 1 point in precision and get more 10% crit to boot. That leaves Vendetta which is the only worthwhile talent but inferior to assassinate.

[termokanden]

Decoy also seems superior for defense compared to just getting a defense buff. Taking yourself out of combat sure beat trying to survive it.

[Ace Attorney]

Atmosfear3 wrote...

Why would you willingly choose to do less damage? Thats counter-productive to what a rogue is suppose to do in the first place.
Duelist is a useless tree.

That is entirely subjective. I believe all specializations have a place.

Atmosfear3 wrote...

Defense and the other tanking talents are worthless because you shouldn't ever be tanking and can be easily gotten if you simply have more cunning.

You can then spend on something else like Stamina or Health.

Atmosfear3 wrote...

The attack passive is worthless because you can easily attain that with 1 point in precision and get more 10% crit to boot.

And doing so, you skip Speed.

Atmosfear3 wrote...

That leaves Vendetta which is the only worthwhile talent but inferior to assassinate.

Inferior in DPS, sure, but superior in utility. Plus Stagger is easier to do reliably (Shield Bash and Sunder) than Brittle (Ice spells and Petrify).

[Le Diable]

It totally depends on the kind of rogue you want Hawke to be...

A defensive Off tank duelist
or a Offensive DPS Assassin

If you would rather want to rely on your party dishing out the damage then go for a duelist build
and if you want one shot lieutenants and siphon out the health in a single strike from bosses i suggest assassin

the Shadow Assassin archer is my fav in rogue build followed by the Shadow Assassin dual wielder...
I always needed extra stamina draughts for the duelist and hence i felt bored and left it halfway and re circulated my points to be a assassin shadow dual wielder

[Le Diable]

It totally depends on the kind of rogue you want Hawke to be...

A defensive Off tank duelist
or a Offensive DPS Assassin

If you would rather want to rely on your party dishing out the damage then go for a duelist build
and if you want one shot lieutenants and siphon out the health in a single strike from bosses i suggest assassin

the Shadow Assassin archer is my fav in rogue build followed by the Shadow Assassin dual wielder...
I always needed extra stamina draughts for the duelist and hence i felt bored and left it halfway and re circulated my points to be a assassin shadow dual wielder

[termokanden]

I'd hate to be missing the stamina you get from Bloodlust. No wonder you were drinking potions a lot.

I think rogues should be better at regaining stamina without having to be assassins.

[aethernox]

Duelist gets you +40% attack and +15% crit chance, while Precision gives you 10% less attack, and you miss out on the 15% attack speed and 10% cooldown reduction on Assassinate/Vendetta/Mark of Death. Duelist also gives you +20% defense (The +20% defense passive, though, is admittedly worthless, but you don't have to take it), and Vendetta, which is fantastic. Sure, you could pull out a bow and do a low-damage assassinate on whatever Mage is across the battlefield, or you could Vendetta it and be in melee with the group of elite archers surrounding it.

Vendetta is worse than assassinate, yes, but it's still comparable. I'd rather have an assassinate and half of another than just assassinate. Vendetta also ignores armor/damage resistance and gets a giant damage bonus with stagger, making it an excellent second attack when your Winter's Grasp/Petrify -> Assassinate didn't one-hit the higher end bosses/elites.

Shadow gives you... +25% crit damage. And, uhh, ... nothing else? Inconspicuous stops enemies from targetting you, but then they very well may just charge anders/merrill. I'd rather be able to goad them all onto Fenris/Aveline. Disorienting Criticals would be good if there were any good sources of Obscure, but the only decent one has a giant cooldown and a mediocre duration. None of the Disoriented CCCs are very good on nightmare, either, as far as I recall. Decoy is okay for setting up obscure, but then you're spending another 40 stamina and 6 talent points for what? Roughly a 25% total damage boost (you're getting a total of +50% crit damage; with end-game gear and the assassin tree, your crit damage should already be over 200%)  for 15 seconds out of every 30, maybe once or twice per fight? Versus using Speed, which is... +15% DPS, always, plus more backstabs/vendettas. Yeah, that sounds totally hax. How could anyone ever think that wouldn't be awesome?

[pyre]

Improved Rally basically refills the stamina for my Rogue completely every time its cast. Never had stam issues except for a solo fight situation.

[termokanden]

Decoy is okay for setting up obscure, but then you're spending another 40 stamina and 6 talent points for what?

 
Turns out there's something that's not really working right with Decoy and the obscure stuff. I think there might be a bug there. At least I can't seem to get the disorienting criticals to work with the Decoy obscure. But I can when I'm obscured in another way.

That doesn't mean Decoy is bad though. It's a brilliant defensive tool.

Modifié par termokanden, 23 mars 2011 - 09:52 .

[enhancedhpb]

Atmosfear3 wrote...

Why would you willingly choose to do less damage? Thats counter-productive to what a rogue is suppose to do in the first place.

Not everyone chooses a rogue to be a "Damager".

Modifié par enhancedhpb, 23 mars 2011 - 09:59 .

[Invalidcode]

Cameleon's Breath(Upgraded) + Disorienting critical. No need for Shadow veil, lingering shroud. No point in Predator, Ambush, Stealth neither. Small investment but very good result.
Evade, Decoy & Inconspicuous pretty much cover all the survival need.

Having them charging my mage is better, they have better armor and I can stab them at the back while they were on their way to the mage, they will die before they can touch the mages.

[aethernox]

So, by using Chameleon's Breath instead, you save three skill points... by spending three skill points. And you still are only obscured for 15 seconds, with a 30 second cooldown. So, there's almost no difference at all?

Also, on what difficulty can Anders out-tank you? Merrill, admittedly, can get pretty beefy, but Anders? Not to mention that you lose a lot of attack speed while you chase people down. It only takes a few seconds to run over to your mage, generally, so what are you auto-attacking down with reduced attack speed over the course of three seconds? Critters, squishy normals? I'm not buying it.

[Ace Attorney]

aethernox wrote...

So, by using Chameleon's Breath instead, you save three skill points... by spending three skill points. And you still are only obscured for 15 seconds, with a 30 second cooldown. So, there's almost no difference at all?

Also, on what difficulty can Anders out-tank you? Merrill, admittedly, can get pretty beefy, but Anders? Not to mention that you lose a lot of attack speed while you chase people down. It only takes a few seconds to run over to your mage, generally, so what are you auto-attacking down with reduced attack speed over the course of three seconds? Critters, squishy normals? I'm not buying it.

Shadow veil + lingering shroud + Predator + Ambush + Stealth = 5 Skills

Not necessarily agreeing/disagreeing with the assessment, just noting that.

[Invalidcode]

I have a duelist too, shadow/as and duelist/as play opposite . Why would you let a shadow rogue get hit in the first place? By the time the Breath wears off, all the non-critters are dead already and you are clearing them and waiting for the next group to spawn and walk to your group, and breath will be up when that happens.

You could get Shadow veil+lingering shroud etc if your play-style supports that, too much investment for me. You can go the direction of Overpowering fog too, that doesn't FF in NM.
My point is Shadow gives you 25% + another 25% crit damage and two very good survival skill for relative small investment.

Duelist, Vendetta is great, other than that the points spent VS damage gain isn't that great. Fun for off-tanking I guess.

[aethernox]

I never suggested Stealth, Predator, Ambush, OR lingering shroud, though. I wouldn't take any of those. I'm talking about the cost of getting Decoy + Shadow Veil.

I was actually incorrect earlier, since I forgot that you aren't obscured for the full length of the decoy. So, in the end, the only talents in the Shadow tree that I would use are... Disorienting Criticals and Pinpoint precision. And even then, you need three other points in the Chameleon's Breath line to make DC worth it.

So, you're spending 5 skill points for: +25% crit damage, and to be able to spend 20 stamina to get another +25% crit damage for 15 seconds out of every 30.

Conversely, you lose 20% attack, 10% attack speed, 5% crit chance, 40% defense, and 10% cooldown reduction, for the same amount of skill points. However, the Duelist qualifies for Vendetta, which is entirely worth an additional two point investment.

That's running under the assumption that you're using a fully upgraded Precision plus Harmony instead of a fully upgraded Speed plus Harmony; you need a good source of +% attack, so using anything other than precision on an Assassin/Shadow is a bad idea.

[Invalidcode]

My duelist runs Harmony with upgraded speed, I know what Duelist can do. My shadow does not, I play it very differently. Both spec works. With Heroic aura and some gear +attack is almost capped (for now, my shadow rogue is only close near the end of act2 iirc)

Normally I don't think you need all the + attack from Duelist tree anyways, you would be capped against bosses before you even take all the talents from Duelist tree.
Duelist I go Vendetta+Assassinate and some other fun stuff I forgot.
Shadow I go Twin fangs, explosive strike+Assassinate.

Decoy is great, NPC assassin go stealth? I pop decoy and they will BS the decoy, I just laugh and kill them, it is really fun. And some other fun stuff you can do with it. Inconspicuous is like another free out of the jail card.

Idk the hard numbers of Chameleon's Breath, but it works really nice, when covered the party pretty much no need to care about any physical damage.

[Ace Attorney]

aethernox wrote...

I never suggested Stealth, Predator, Ambush, OR lingering shroud, though. I wouldn't take any of those. I'm talking about the cost of getting Decoy + Shadow Veil.

I was actually incorrect earlier, since I forgot that you aren't obscured for the full length of the decoy. So, in the end, the only talents in the Shadow tree that I would use are... Disorienting Criticals and Pinpoint precision. And even then, you need three other points in the Chameleon's Breath line to make DC worth it.

So, you're spending 5 skill points for: +25% crit damage, and to be able to spend 20 stamina to get another +25% crit damage for 15 seconds out of every 30.

Conversely, you lose 20% attack, 10% attack speed, 5% crit chance, 40% defense, and 10% cooldown reduction, for the same amount of skill points. However, the Duelist qualifies for Vendetta, which is entirely worth an additional two point investment.

That's running under the assumption that you're using a fully upgraded Precision plus Harmony instead of a fully upgraded Speed plus Harmony; you need a good source of +% attack, so using anything other than precision on an Assassin/Shadow is a bad idea.

And there lies the problem. The Shadow investment gives you other stuff that you chose to ignore, like threat dump, disorient criticals for your party WHICH IS DPS, and a chance to get stealth upon getting hit, albeit small.

[aethernox]

In my experience, I needed every bit of the +50% attack that I got from Duelist + Harmony to hit the attack caps when I was around level 24, with only around 34 base dexterity (just enough to equip 41 dex daggers with the +7 all stats rune). I think, during the final boss fight, I had leveled enough just beforehand to lower my attack to 100/100/97; this is taking Heroic Aura into consideration. This was my end-game rogue, who alternated playing on Hard and Nightmare. What difficulty are you speaking from, out of curiosity?

Note: +25% Crit Damage is NOT equal to +25% DPS. The Duelist, who is using Speed, is getting roughly +10% DPS immediately.
Then, the duelist probably has higher cunning, since he'll only need to
spend roughly enough dexterity to equip his best weapons, because he
has significantly more +% attack than the shadow. Additionally, the
duelist gets slightly more DPS due to an increased crit chance; the Assassin/Shadow has +15%, while the Duelist has +20%.

Conversely, the +25% (or +50%) crit damage's effect on your DPS is based on its relative size to your standard crit damage.
Taking Assassin into account, a late-game rogue will often have +200%
crit damage; my end-game duelist skipped several quests and was
underleveled, but his final crit damage modifier was the in area of
+220%. If he were a shadow, he'd get an extra 25%, plus another 25% when
obscured, but he would likely have lower cunning, since he'd need
between 45 and 50 dexterity to get 100/100/100 accuracy, which, for the
sake of ease, amounts to (very, very roughly) -14%ish crit damage. That
means, while obscured, the Shadow comes out ahead with roughly
+30-somethingish% crit damage, giving them a total of +250%. Comparing
that to the Duelist's 220% crit modifier, the Shadow comes out with...
about 15% more damage per crit.

The duelist attacks faster and
gets (slightly) more crits, but there are enough variables there to make
it... difficult to even give rough numbers for comparative DPS.

Aside
from that, though, the duelist has 80/80/80 defense, while the shadow
doesn't, and the duelist has Throw The Gauntlet, which is sometimes
irrelevant but at least it's another option. I use it to make elites
stop attacking my mages, or to make the High Dragon/Varterral/Meredith
focus me instead of my party.

Edit:

T3hAnubis wrote...
And there lies the problem. The Shadow
investment gives you other stuff that you chose to ignore, like threat
dump, disorient criticals for your party WHICH IS DPS, and a chance to
get stealth upon getting hit, albeit small.

Actually, I didn't ignore the threat dump. I used the same amount of skill points for each build to compare damage. I didn't actually take Vendetta in that example (which would cost the duelist more skill points than the shadow had spent), nor did I take Decoy or Inconspicuous. I think that both of those skills, though, are inferior to Goad/Armistice.

I did ignore the chance to steal upon getting hit, though,  because it is so very minute, and it doesn't effect your damage output at all without several more skillpoints.

Edit 2:
Oops, I did kind of skimp on mentioning the disorient. Are there any good Disorient CCCs on Nightmare? Stonefist and Spirit Bolt are really mediocre, Virulent Walking Bomb is a deathtrap for you/your tank, and I can't think of any other mage CCCs... Disoriented really is the weakest of the CCC conditions.

Modifié par aethernox, 23 mars 2011 - 11:39 .

[Invalidcode]

Disoriented really is the weakest of the CCC conditions.

Yeah, nothing too fancy/crazy can come out of it beside Walking bomb combo & it is a death sentence unless you micro literally every step of your melee the moment you place the bomb.
But running with DPS build of Aveline is kind of fun, Fenris (2h is too good for player's own good lol) even on NW once you know how to avoid FF. Instead of a min/max party now I am aiming for fun/combo party to play with.

[Ace Attorney]

Goad/Amistice are broken on console versions. And Disorient DPS on Aveline from upgraded Scatter and Assault means more threat for her, giving it additional value.

Modifié par T3hAnubis, 24 mars 2011 - 12:08 .

[Atmosfear3]

enhancedhpb wrote...

Atmosfear3 wrote...

Why would you willingly choose to do less damage? Thats counter-productive to what a rogue is suppose to do in the first place.

Not everyone chooses a rogue to be a "Damager".

Then they're doing it wrong.

[Ace Attorney]

Atmosfear3 wrote...

enhancedhpb wrote...

Atmosfear3 wrote...

Why would you willingly choose to do less damage? Thats counter-productive to what a rogue is suppose to do in the first place.

Not everyone chooses a rogue to be a "Damager".

Then they're doing it wrong.

Opinion, a faulty one at that.

[aethernox]

That's true, I suppose, but I can't use Aveline. She's so... insufferable. And manly.

Didn't know that Goad/Armistice were broken on consoles, though. Oh well.

Still, my main point was that Duelists are neither less offensively viable than Shadows nor "worthless," which I still believe to be true. Honestly, I feel that shadow is the weakest rogue spec.

[Invalidcode]

Aveline is a woman shaped battle ram. (I forgot which NPC said that lol)